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ploded in a suburb of the capital Damascus, killing three people and wounding several others.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the Sunday explosion in Jouber, which it said has seen heavy clashes recently between rebels and the Syrian army. It did not have any immediate word on casualties.
• It said the blast targeted a police station and was carried out by the Jabhat al-Nusra, a militant group linked to al-Qaida, but did not elaborate.
• The government official insisted on anonymity because he is not allowed to make press statements.
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• CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's highest court ruled on Sunday that the nation's Islamist-dominated legislature and constitutional panel were illegally elected, dealing a serious blow to the Islamists' hold on power and prolonging the political instability that has gripped the country since the ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak two years ago.
• But the ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court also said that the legislature's upper house, the only one currently sitting, would not be dissolved until the parliament's lower chamber is elected later this year or early in 2014.
• The same court ruled to dissolve parliament's lower chamber in June, a move that led to the promotion of the toothless upper chamber, the Shura Council, to becoming a law-making house. The Shura Council, long derided as nothing more than a talk shop, was elected by about seven percent of the electorate last year.
• It was not immediately clear whether the ruling on the 100-member constitutional panel would cancel the charter it drafted. The constitution was adopted in a nationwide vote in December with a relatively low turnout of about 35 percent.
• But even if it does not, the ruling will question the legitimacy of the disputed charter pushed through by allies of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in an all-night session late last year. Critics say the charter restricts freedoms and gives clerics a say in legislation. The Islamists who drafted it hail the document as the best one Egypt ever had.
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